THE CURSE OF DUDLEYTOWNThe Story Behind
one of the Most Infamous Lost Towns in American Historyby Troy Taylor

For many years, ghost hunters have
been fascinated by tales of the lost village of Dudleytown
--- a vanished Connecticut village that was apparently
plagued by ghosts, demons and residents who vanished without
a trace. These grave events were said to be caused by a
curse, brought by the Dudley family to the New World. But
how real was this curse?

As the reader will soon find, this
so-called "curse" was nothing more than the product of
active imaginations but as you will also discover, there was
something very strange occurring in Dudleytown ---- whether
cursed or not!

In the far reaches of northwestern Connecticut, in the
shadows of the mountains and lost in the pages of time,
rests the remains of a small village called Dudleytown. The
homes of this once thriving community are long gone, but the
land where the town once stood is far from empty. Amidst the
forest and rocks are tales of ghosts, demons, unexplained
mysteries, curses and a rich history that dates back to the
very beginnings of America.

Today, only the cellar holes and a few
stone foundations remain. The roads that once traversed to
this place are now little more than narrow trails where only
a few adventurous hikers, and the occasional ghost hunter,
dare to wander. Although it is forbidden, the most hardened
curiosity-seekers still dare to venture down Dark Entry Road
and into these shadowy woods at night.

Dudleytown, or at least the area where it
was located, was first owned by a man named Thomas Griffis,
one of the first to settle in this region, in the early
1740’s. There are no records to say that he ever lived where
Dudleytown later stood but he did own half of the land in
1741. A few years later, with the arrival of Gideon Dudley
in 1747, the village would be named. Gideon was followed to
the region by two brothers and Dudley’s have become known
over the years as the men who brought a curse to this small
town – a curse that has allegedly plagued the region ever
since.

According to what have turned out to be
both recent and fanciful accounts, the "curse" had its
beginnings in England in 1510. At that time, Edmund Dudley
was beheaded for being involved in a plot to overthrow King
Henry VIII. Supposedly, a curse was placed on the family at
this time, which stated that all of the Dudley descendants
would be surrounded by horror and death. Proponents of the
curse claim that the Dudley’s then began to experience a
rather disquieting run of bad luck.

Edmund’s son, John Dudley, also attempted
to control the British throne by arranging for his son,
Guilford, to marry Lady Jane Grey, next in line for the
crown. After Edward VI died, Lady Jane became the queen for
a short time before the plan failed, ending with the
execution of Lady Jane and the two Dudley’s. To make matters
worse, Guilford’s brother returned from France, and being a
military officer, brought home a plague that he spread to
his officers and troops. The sickness wiped out massive
numbers of British soldiers and eventually spread throughout
the country, killing thousands.

John Dudley’s third son, Robert, Earl of
Leicester, a favorite of Elizabeth I, wisely decided to
leave England and travel to the New World. It would be his
somewhat luckier descendant, William, who would settle in
Guilford, Connecticut. Three of William’s descendants,
Abiel, Barzallai and Gideon, would later buy a plot of land
in Cornwall township.

While there are undoubtedly some grim
events that surrounded the Dudley family in England and
France, questions have been raised as whether or not any
"curse" really followed them to America. The question has
been raised because in order for the curse to have been
passed along to account for the haunting of Dudleytown, then
William Dudley would have had to have been the son of
Robert, Earl of Leicester – but he wasn’t. Robert Dudley had
only two sons and one of them died while still a child. The
other went to Italy and while he had children, all of them
remained in that country. This means that there was no link
between William, his sons who founded Dudleytown, and any
so-called "curse".

But while we may have established the
fact that Dudleytown was never "cursed", this does not mean
that it was not "tainted" in some other way. There are many
places across the country where odd things happen and where
the land does not seem quite right. Records indicate that
the land around Dudleytown was once Mohawk Indian tribal
grounds but tell us little else before the coming of the
first settlers. This region has gained a chilling reputation
over the years. Could the weird stories and strange
disappearances here be connected to the past in some way –
or are they nothing more than just coincidence and
imagination?

In the early 1740’s, the mentioned Thomas
Griffis bought a parcel of land that would later be
considered the first lot in Dudleytown. The land today looks
much as it did when Griffis first came here. It is covered
in thick forest and the ground is strewn with rocks. The
nearby mountains also heavily shadow the area, so it
receives little sunlight. The woods were later dubbed with
the rather ominous name of "Dark Entry Forest".

In 1747, Gideon Dudley bought some land
from Griffis to start a small farm. By 1753, Gideon's two
brothers, Barzallai and Abiel Dudley, from Guilford,
Connecticut, also purchased land nearby. A few years later,
a Martin Dudley from Massachusetts also moved to the area
but was from a different line of the family. He later
married Gideon’s daughter.

One thing that should be mentioned was
that Dudleytown was never an actual town. It was a more
isolated part of Cornwall. The village rested in the middle
of three large hills, which accounts for the recollections
of it being nearly dark at noon time. The Cornwall township
was never a good area for farming, as is apparent by the
rocks that were used to build the foundations and stone
walls that still stand today. In spite of this though,
settlers began to trickle into the area. The Tanner family,
the Jones’, the Patterson’s, the Dibble’s and the Porter’s
all took up residence here. The community grew even larger
after iron ore was discovered nearby and farming became a
secondary concern. However, there were never any stores,
shops , schools or churches in Dudleytown. Provisions had to
be purchased in nearby towns and when one died, a trip to
Cornwall was necessary because, in addition to there being
no church in town, there was no cemetery either. The
population of Dudleytown was never large and according to an
1854 map, the peak number of families who lived here only
reached 26.

In spite of all of these things, the town
did thrive for a time. Dudleytown was noted for its timber,
which was burned and used to make wood coal for the nearby
Litchfield County Iron Furnaces in Cornwall and other towns.
The furnaces later moved closer to the railroads and the
more industrial towns though and the lumber was no longer
needed. Iron ore was used from the area for a time and there
were three water-powered mills in Dudleytown as well. Most
of the mills eventually closed because of the long trip down
the mountain to deliver their goods.

Despite the outward signs of prosperity
though, there were strange deaths and bizarre occurrences at
Dudleytown from the start. Some historians have attempted to
downplay the unusual events in recent years. They will
debunk the legends of the town by first stating how few
people there ever were who lived here and then will try and
downplay the disappearances, cases of insanity and weird
deaths, as if such things happen all of the time. And
perhaps they do – but why so many unusual happenings in such
an isolated area with so few people living in it? The number
of deaths that have occurred here would not be such a high
number in a larger town but in this small community, one
can’t help but wonder what exactly was taking place. There
are also, I believe, an inordinate number of people who went
insane in this area, as well as people who simply vanished
that are in addition to those who are documented here. It’s
no wonder – bogus or not – that a story started about a
Dudleytown "curse".

Three of the Dudley’s moved out of the
region and lived long and full lives, dying of natural
causes and forever diminishing any possibilities of a curse.
Only Abiel Dudley remained in town and after a series of
reverses, lost his entire fortune – and his mind. Abiel died
in 1799 at the age of 90 and when he was no longer able to
pay his debts, the town took his property, sold it and then
made him a ward of the town. Toward the end, Abiel was
senile and insane and would not be the last to suffer from
this affliction.

In 1792, seven years before Abiel Dudley
passed away, his good friend and neighbor, Gershon
Hollister, was killed while building a barn at the home of
William Tanner, Abiel’s closest neighbor. Tanner was also
said to have gone insane, although likely from old age and
senility rather than from supernatural influences. He lived
to the age of 104 and according to records was "slightly
demented" at the time of his death. There have been stories
that have circulated claiming that Tanner told other
villages of "strange creatures" that came out of the woods
at night. If this is true, there is no way for us to know if
these "creatures" were products of the unexplained or
products of Tanner’s feeble mind.

The Nathaniel Carter family moved to
Dudleytown in 1759 and lived in a house once owned by Abiel
Dudley before he was made a ward of the town. A mysterious
plague swept through Dudleytown and Cornwall and took the
lives of the Adoniram Carter family, relatives of Nathaniel,
and saddened by the loss, they moved to Binghampton, New
York from Dudleytown in 1763. Those who believe in the
"curse" say that the taint of Dudleytown followed after them
but their tragic fate was actually far too common during the
early days of the frontier. The Carter’s moved to the
"Delaware wilderness", in the heart of Indian territory, and
during an attack, Indians slaughtered Nathaniel, his wife
and an infant child. The Carter’s other three children were
abducted and taken to Canada, where two daughters were
ransomed. The son, David Carter, remained with his captors,
married an Indian girl and later returned to the United
States for his education. He went on to edit a newspaper and
became a justice on the Supreme Court.

Another bizarre tragedy affected one of
the most famous residents of the region, General Herman
Swift, who had served in the Revolutionary War under George
Washington. In 1804, his wife, Sarah Faye, was struck by
lightning while standing on the front porch of their home
near Dudleytown. She was killed instantly. The General went
insane and died soon after. Many have dismissed this
incident as not being connected to the other unusual events,
saying that Swift did not actually live in Dudleytown but on
Bald Mountain Road (where his house remains today) and that
he only went insane when he became old and senile. But in an
area this sparsely populated, the records indicated three
people to have gone insane in the space of less than a half
century – could this be mere coincidence? And does a person
being struck by lightning while standing on their front
porch qualify as being "unusual"? I would say that it does
and our story is not yet complete.

Another famous personage allegedly
connected to Dudleytown was Horace Greeley, the editor and
founder of the New York Tribune – or so the stories of the
"curse" go. In this case, the story deserves to be debunked.
Greeley married a young woman named Mary Young Cheney, who
the stories of the "curse" say was born in Dudleytown. In
truth, Mary was born and raised in nearby Litchfield and
never lived in Dudleytown. She left the area as early as
1833 and went to live in a vegetarian boarding house that
was owned by Dr. Graham (of "Graham Cracker" fame) and
became involved in the popular "wellness" movement of the
time. While there, she met and later married Horace Greeley.
In 1872, Greeley ran for president against Ulysses S. Grant
and lost the election. A short time before it, Mary suffered
from an attack of "lung disease" and died. Her death
occurred in New York City with her husband and two
daughters, Ida and Gabrielle, in attendance. She was buried
in Greenwood Cemetery. The legends claim that she committed
suicide but this was not the case. Greeley himself died one
month later and the electoral votes that he received in the
election were distributed to minor candidates.

After the Civil War, Dudleytown began to
die and many of the villagers simply packed up and moved
away. The demise of the town itself is hardly surprising,
whether you believe in the so-called "curse" or not. Its
geographical location was foolhardy at best. Surrounded by
hills and at elevations of more than 1500 feet, there was
little chance that a good crop would ever grow and sustain
life in the village. The winters were harsh here and even
the hardy apple trees were stunted from months of cold. As
mentioned already, the soil was rocky and the area was
plagued by almost too much water. It pooled into tepid
swamps and seeped into the earth, creating a damp morass.

But even if you overlook the idea of an
actual "curse" and admit that the location of the town must
have had a hand in its undoing, the sheer number of unusual
deaths (leaving out that of Mary Greeley) and mental
conditions in such an isolated area more than suggests that
something out of the ordinary was occurring in the little
town. And no matter how hard the debunkers try to disregard
the next mysterious event to occur in Dudleytown, their
efforts fall short.

This event occurred in 1901, at a time
when the population of Dudleytown had dwindled away to
almost nothing. One of the last residents of the town was a
man named John Patrick Brophy. Tragedy visited swiftly and
in several blows. First, his wife died of consumption, which
was not uncommon in those days and there was nothing strange
about her ailment, as she had been suffering from it for
years. This did not lessen Brophy’s grief however, but he
was soon further stricken when his two children vanished
into the forest just a short time after the funeral. And
while their disappearance could have been voluntary (they
had been accused of stealing sleigh blankets, a minor
offense), there is nothing to indicate that it was. They
vanished and were never found. Shortly after, the Brophy’s
house burned to the ground in an unexplained fire and not
long after, Brophy himself vanished into the forest. He was
never seen again.

By the early 1900’s, Dudleytown was
completely deserted. The remaining homes began to fall into
disrepair and ruin, and soon, the forest began to reclaim
the village that had been carved out of it. But there was
still one other death that proponents of the "curse" have
connected to Dudleytown and while the curse may be unlikely,
it does mark one additional case of insanity for an isolated
region that was already riddled with them.

Around 1900, Dr. William Clarke came to
Cornwall and fell in love with the forest and the quiet
country life. Clarke had been born in 1877 and grew up on a
farm in Tenafly, New Jersey. He later became a professor of
surgery and taught at Columbia College of Physicians and
Surgeons, as well as earning a reputation as the leading
cancer specialist in New York. He purchased 1,000 acres of
land in the wilds of Connecticut, which included Dudleytown,
and began construction of a summer and vacation home here.
Over the next number of years, he and his wife, Harriet Bank
Clarke, visited the house on weekends and during the summer
until it was completed. After that, it became mostly a
holiday house for short trips in the summer and for
Thanksgiving. Together, they maintained an idyllic second
life near Dudleytown until 1918.

One summer weekend, Dr. Clarke was called
away to New York on an emergency. His wife stayed behind and
according to the story, he returned 36 hours later to find
that she had gone insane, just as a number of previous
residents of the village had done. The story also claims
that she told of strange creatures that came out of the
forest and attacked her. She committed suicide soon after.
But how much truth is there to this tale? Perhaps more than
some would like you to believe. It has been recorded that
for several years before her suicide, Mrs. Clarke suffered
from a "chronic illness". There is nothing to indicate what
this ailment might have been or whether it was a physical or
mental one. I think that it is safe to say though that
mentally stable individuals do not ordinarily take their own
lives. As far as whether or not she saw "strange creatures
in the woods" – well, we will never really know for sure but
even if we disregard this, we still have one more suicide
that occurred to a resident of the nearly nonexistent
village of Dudleytown.

While undoubtedly shattered by his wife’s
suicide, Dr. Clarke continued to maintain his house in
Dudleytown and continued to visit. A number of years later,
he remarried and returned to stay at his summer house until
a larger home was completed nearby in 1930. In 1924, he and
his wife, Carita, as well as other doctors, friends and
interested landowners formed the "Dark Entry Forest
Association". It was designed to act as forest preserve so
that the land around Dudleytown would remain "forever wild".
They held their first meeting in 1926 with 41 members. Dr.
Clarke died in Cornwall Bridge in February 1943 and Carita
passed away five years later. A number of their children and
family members still reside in the area.

Today, Dudleytown is mostly deserted,
except for the curiosity-seekers and tourists, who come
looking for thrills. The Dark Forest Entry Association still
owns most of the land the village once stood on. There are a
group of homes on Bald Mountain Road that are very secluded
from the main roads and they belong to the closest
residents. These locals maintain that nothing supernatural
takes place in this region and perhaps they are right. It
seems unlikely that the "curse" on Dudleytown ever really
existed but on the other hand, there is something strange
about such a small area with so many disappearances, unusual
deaths, suicides and cases of insanity. The stories of a
"curse" had to have gotten started for some reason and
perhaps this was why.

As far as we know, the ghostly tales
began to surface in the 1940’s. It was at this time that
visitors to the ruins of the village began to speak of
strange incidents and wispy apparitions in the woods. Even
today, those who have visited the place boast of paranormal
photographs, overwhelming feelings of terror, mysterious
lights, sights and sounds and even of being touched, pushed
and scratched by unseen hands. Some researchers refer to the
area as a "negative power spot", or a place where entities
enter this world from the other side. They say this may
explain the strange events in Dudleytown’s history, like the
eerie reports, the strange creatures and perhaps even the
outbreaks of insanity and madness. The place is often
thought of as "tainted" in some way, as if the ground has
somehow spoiled here, or perhaps was sour all along.

Some historians and debunkers dismiss
such reports and theories and maintain that just because the
so-called "Curse of Dudleytown" doesn’t exist, then nothing
strange has ever occurred here either. However, an
open-minded look at some of the things that have happened do
seem to show this is a strange place and one that has been
an enigma from the earliest days of its history. Whether or
not there is any truth to the accounts of people who have
come here since the days when the village was abandoned is
up to the reader to decide.

I should warn you though that trying to
visit Dudleytown today can be hazardous – and not because of
ghosts. It should be noted that the planners for the Dark
Forest Entry Association have forbidden trespassing on their
property. In 1999, they announced that they would no longer
allow hikers on the land. In spite of this, many still go –
now daring not only the spirits, but the authorities as
well. Unfortunately, the ruins of Dudleytown have been
vandalized in recent years and the constant streams of
trespassers have had a negative effect on the ecology of the
area. Just as unfortunate is the fact that the forbidden
quality of Dudleytown is what brings so many
curiosity-seekers to the vicinity. However, this author
advises readers to refrain from visiting this area until
methods can be devised to better preserve the wilderness
here and until this unsettled corner of New England has been
opened to the public again.